Crowdfunded musical instruments keep impressing. Innovators are taking novel concepts to the market faster than ever. We’ve assembled a new list of 10 great projects that raised over two million dollars combined. This list surpasses our previous, and now outdated, top ten musical instruments on kickdstarter.

Artiphon
Over one million dollars raised. Artiphon captures the essence of guitar, piano and even violin through a combination of a slick hardware interface and a smartphone. Gorgeous woodworking and years of iterative design gave birth to an instant classic.

The module works as a stand-alone keyed monochord. It has a bottom plate & end plates where you can attach strings. Also, the octaves are independent and can be dropped into the acoustic modular stringed instrument. The design started off with a cardboard prototype. After some minor corrections, a wooden version was produced.

Keith over at kyubmusic recently took some time out of his day to answer my questions. He has been cooking up some interesting musical inventions, and recently had success with the Kyub kit. I am grateful for his insight, and had to share it with you.

First off, who are you? And how did you get started making these delightful boxes?

I guess I am a musical instrument designer! I’m not trying to dodge the question, but it just made me realize that maybe I passed a threshold in some sense of having sold musical instruments I designed. So if you stick with something you like may be it does work out. I studied electronics in college but was always interested in music and constructing things. I am mostly self-taught in these latter categories, something possible, I think, because these are things that interest me. I live in Milwaukee with my wife and my dog who sings to the violin if it is played just right :).

My first working design was for a servoelectric guitar in which the strings are tuned by changing their tension at high speed over about an octave – so it’s different than an auto tuning guitar. There are a handful of videos on the web of the various iterations of this and I have a website www.servoelectric guitar.com which has build instructions. It’s something that got a lot of views but didn’t go much beyond that.Read More »

This will become your main instrument, and you will like it more than the bowback mandolin.

I didn’t believe him. After a week of playing, its true. I love this Mandolin.

Beautiful Mandolin

Nice finish on the head

Notching the bridge

The troublesome neck joint

Back came out nice

Went to a professional to adjust the action

Stratches in the finish

Done with the finish

1 Layer of Varnish

Trimming off the back

Clamping the Top Down

Hardest part was getting this to fit

These came out well:
+ All the time spent on the project was enjoyable.
+ Tone & playability
+ Color and texture on the finish
+ Using Google Helpouts and having Hustler Guitar give advice on the build. In particular, his advice on the finish.
+ Having a Stubblebine Lutherie adjust the action on the frets&strings

These things came out less well:
+ Original action on the strings & frets were too high and hard to play.
+ The neck joint was a pain to put together, and the angle was a bit off.
+ Scratches around the neck joint. Too forceful with sandpaper.

Here is a video of the kit before I got started. You can order the kit on Amazon.